ICAS:MP Special Lectures with Andreas Gestrich, Veena Das, Willibald Steinmetz and Gopal Guru; 28 September – 1 October 2021

ICAS:MP is holding a series of special lectures as part of it’s Cross-Modular Conference on ‘The Social and Political Life of Experience-Near Concepts’ from 28 September – 1 October 2021.

Register for the event here:

Please find below the details of the lectures:

28 September (8:00 – 9:00pm IST): Honour, Dignity and the Experience of Poverty: Perspectives from European History

Speaker: Andreas Gestrich (University of Trier)

Chair: Shail Mayaram (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)

Bio-note: Andreas Gestrich is emeritus professor in Modern European History at Trier University. From 2006 to 2018 he served as the director of the German Historical Institute London and was also as one of the founding directors of ICAS:MP. His research interests comprise the history of childhood, family and youth, the history of political public spheres, and the history of poverty. Among his publications are Absolutismus und Öffentlichkeit. Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts (1994); Familie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (1999); with Beate Althammer and Jens Gründler (eds.), The Welfare State and the ‘Deviant Poor’ in Europe 1870-1933 (2014).

29 September (7:45 – 8:45pm IST): The Ordinary Life of Concepts: The Place of Examples

Speaker: Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University)

Chair: Martin Fuchs (MWK, University of Erfurt)

Bio-note:  Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in Anthropology and Adjunct Professor of Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University, USA. Previously she taught as Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics for more than thirty years. She has held several visiting professorships, including the Simon Distinguished Professor at Manchester University, Professor at the University of Paris, Pantheon Sorbonne, Professor, École normale supérieure,  Paris. She has been elected  to several distinguished named lectures such as Smuts Lecture at the University of Cambridge, Distinguished Public Lecture at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Public Lectures at the Academy of Korean Studies, Seoul, Radhakaal Mukherjee Lecture at the Indian Sociological Society. Das is a recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, University of Edinburgh, University of Bern, and Durham University. She received the Sudhindra Chakrobary Award from the University of Calcutta , the Nessim Habib World Prize from University of Geneva, and the Anders Retzius Gold medal of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography. She is a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of TWAS: The World Academy of Sciences, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

Her most recent publications are Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2007), Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty (2014), Four Lectures on Ethics (2015, co-authored),Textures of the Ordinary : Doing Anthropology after Wittgenstein  (2020) and Slum Acts (In Press). In addition, she has co-edited several influential anthologies on themes of social suffering, violence, anthropology and philosophy, and current political formations that determine life and death. The most recent co-edited book is entitled, Words and Worlds A Lexicon for Dark Times (2021)

30 September (7:45 – 8:45pm IST): The Semantics and Practices of Comparison in Politics and Social life

Speaker: Willibald Steinmetz (Bielefeld University)

Chair: Ravi Sundaram (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)

Bio-note: Willibald Steinmetz (b. 1957) is professor of modern and contemporary political history at Bielefeld University (since 2003). He has worked extensively on the history of concepts as well as on patterns of language use in politics and public life. Among his publications in English are several edited volumes: Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age (Oxford: OUP 2000), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (Oxford: OUP 2011), Writing Political History Today (ed. with H.-G. Haupt and I. Glicher-Holtey) (Frankfurt: Campus 2014), Conceptual History in the European Space (ed. with M. Freeden and J. Fernández-Sebastián) (New York: Berghahn 2017), The Force of Comparison (New York: Berghahn 2019). His most recent monograph (in German) is a comprehensive history of Europe in the 19^th century (Europa im 19. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt: Fischer 2019).    

1 October (8:00 – 9:00pm IST): The Idea of Manuski: The Ethics of Mutual Respect

Speaker: Gopal Guru (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Chair: Srirupa Roy (University of Göttingen)

Bio-note: Gopal Guru is former Professor, JNU. Published Books: Caste, Experience and the Everyday Social (with Sundar Sarrukai) OUP, 2019, The Cracked Mirror, An Indian Debate of Theory and Experience, OUP, 2012, Humiliation: Claims and Context, (ed) OUP, 2009, Political Phenomenology of Touch, in ed, Arindam Chakrabarty, The Indian Aesthetic and the Philosophy of Art, Bloomsbury, London, 2016, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s Modern Moral Idealism: A Metaphysics of Emancipation. in ed, Gonardon Ganeri, The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, OUP, London, 2017.

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